Helsinki, elections and the end of winter

After the 5 days in Lahti I went for 2 days with Nina to Helsinki. I've been so many times to Hki that I stopped counting and so I think I'm the perfect guide. I've done that also many time in every season by now. :D So since Nina is going to study in Hki next spring I've just went with her to the usual spots in the city enter including the Cathedral and the Kauppahalli. Since Nina was sick and I've seen everything so often we didn't really do much outside the city center. Although the weather was so beautiful but it was still very cold and when you are sick you cannot enjoy anything anyway. So just a small sightseeing tour this time.

March was also the month of the parliament elections. And how crazy it was. For the whole month all parties had their little campaign booth so the pedestrian area looked like it was Christmas market all over again. You got flags, candy, coffee and other things for free, if you wanted too.
And seriously I didn't noticed how annoying election ads can be if you are not allowed to vote. Half of my facebook page was full with ads from different candidates. Yeap new medias are great but you can also overdo it. Funny in Finland are the election posters. In Germany they are scattered all over the city on lampposts and you have very huge billboards sometimes but here in Finland you have all election posters from all parties together and usually there are not many slogans on there but instead all candidates from each party. And seriously people are standing in front of these billboards and actually checking them out. Well I guess most of the people heard about the populist party called Perussuomalaiset (PerusS) in English often called True Finns. And well yes they got a lot of votes. Too many for my taste and I can just repeat what a good friend of mine wrote on fb after the election: 'I'm so disappointed by the Finnish people.' So by now it is still not 100% sure what the government will look like just that my second favorite Finnish politician (first one is of course Muumin mama Tarja Halonen) Jyrki Katainen (to be clear: I just like him not his party!) will be the new Prime minister (Pääministeri). But seriously it doesn't look very good. Especially since the top 3 parties of the election are so very different from each other. Kokoomus (National Coalition Party) the Party of Jyrki as a liberal-conservative party, then the Social democrats (SDP) and the right wing PersusS. Very weird combination. And it looks like they may not include the Swedish People's party in the government which I very much dislike. I should maybe add that it is very common in Finland to have multi-party coalitions. The last governments had between 3 (2003) and 4 (2007) or even 5 parties as in 1995 and 1999. So Finns are not at all afraid about different opinions and parties in the government. But well we'll see what the new government brings. Everybody is already worried about the EU politics, especially concerning the Portugal financial aid, but also about immigration and the position of the Swedish language.

Last but not least winter is over. It took a while till the snow started to melt but it eventually did when the temperature rose at the end of march. Problem was for a week the whole city was one big ice skating ring. During the day all the now was melting and doing the night everything was freezing over again. So in the morning the whole pathways where covered with ice. It was horrible. So in the morning you could barely walk without falling every two meters, then in then afternoon it was even worse because at the same time your feet where wet because half of the ice had meted and the resulting hydroplaning is seriously not much fun. But after a week that whole mess was over so no slippery pathways anymore just water, lots of water. Hurray for my rubber boots. :D
At the beginning of April then the miracle happened: The river was ice free! :D Seriously nobody could believe how fast it was going in the end but now spring is almost here.